


Littlin

by Deejaymil



Series: Original Stories by a Bored Australian [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Historical, Letters, POV First Person, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:46:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7526173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dear Mama,</p><p>Let me tell you about the night Littlin et the die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Littlin

**Author's Note:**

> Original flash fiction for the prompt 'Historical Fiction, Dice, Shoe Shop'

 

 

> _Dear Mama,_
> 
> _You say that things are changing, but nothing seems to change here. Everything you speak of, the gas masks and the bombs – the bombs! Bombs in London, dropped from zeppelins! It seems impossible! And it’s all so terribly far away. I do wish you’d leave – come here to me, I’m sure Mr. Broadwithe would allow you board, especially with the help I’ve been around the shop!_
> 
> _I’m sitting in the shop now writing this and the air smells of leather and Neatsfoot oil. It feels as though the last few years have taken a lifetime. When you speak of change, I don’t think of sleepy old Saltaire and the shoe shop ever being swept along with it. The War is so far away, like a dream._
> 
> _There was a night when the War loomed close, and that was the night Littlin et the die._
> 
> _Perhaps I haven’t mentioned Littlin yet. My charge, sweet Mary Broadwithe, she has a cat. Just a slim little thing. All whiskers and glossy fur and poking, mischievous paws. She’s an awful bother, and a terrible mouser, and Mr. Broadwithe swore he’d be done with her before she was grown._
> 
> _I came down one morning and found Littlin on the floor of the shop, so still and all covered in her own sick, and I thought her dead. So sure was I that I began to prepare a little casket for her, a silliness I know, but I also knew Mary would be beside herself with the loss of her friend._
> 
> _But she breathed! Just a little, the slightest bit, and Mr. Broadwithe bellowed at the errand boy to run to the vet and to bring him as quickly as he could. I couldn’t fathom it, Mama, the cost of a doctor just for a wee cat! I never thought my employer the type! Cats are a dime a dozen, if we put a bowl of milk on the stoop we’d have another in an hour. But the vet he sent for, and the vet did come, and what an odd sight together they made._
> 
> _Mr. Broadwithe is a withered man, folded in upon himself like a well-worn sheet of paper with skin so thin you could trace the lines of his veins along it. But there’s a strength to him, like an old greyhound dreaming of past glories. And his hands! Such agile hands, cobbler’s hands, able to repair any shoe you put in front of him, any leatherwork, with deft, quick stitching._
> 
> _In contrast, the vet was a huge Scottish bear; red-haired and bristling with beady blue eyes that were cold and fierce. His hands, because the first thing you noted of himwe his hands, they’re big and chapped from days and nights upon the moors with the sheep and cattle in the blistering cold. Rough hands, and you cannot imagine how strange the sight of delicate Littlin held in that grasp._
> 
> _I don’t know how it is in London, Mama, but here it is only the lonely and the eccentrics who call for the vet for issues of fancy pets. Cats and dogs with no use except to be friends to their owners, luxuries. I doubt the vet had worked like this with such a small beast before, and his fingers were clumsy and awkward._
> 
> _I remember snippets of this night so clearly, but there are things that stand out to me. The vet’s bag tinkling as he set it down, rows and rows of gleaming Winchester bottles tucked into the many pockets. In that moment I was never so glad that you learned me my words, as I read such exotic names as Tincture of Camphor, Hexamine and the mysteriously labelled Perchloride of Mercury. I have been into the vet’s dispensary since that night and these delicate bottles are a fading memory, replaced with much more scientific advances, or at least the new vet assures me so. More change._
> 
> _Hours they worked over the little cat and said barely a word. Mary sometimes watched with a face as pale as a ghost, as though she also lie on the floor with her stricken beast. I shooed her away when it seemed too much, but she always came back._
> 
> _There was this atmosphere in that room, this paused tension, one that I have never encountered again. The vet’s rough fingers catching slightly on the skin of Littlin’s belly as he felt for the cause of her sickness, the puffs of smoke from Mr. Broadwithe’s pipe as he observed anxiously. Two men, old men of a past age, bent over this tiny form and waiting wordlessly for death, because we all believed her beyond help._
> 
> _And then – the discovery! He made a noise of triumph, and showed us the hard feel of something that the silly beast had eaten, causing all sorts of nastiness inside her!_
> 
> _After that it moved so quickly it was like a dream. We were all so tired, hours had gone, but he fetched his scalpel and cut carefully into her and he warned us that this could go wrong, it was so dangerous, so unheard of. There were vets in the bigger towns such as Darrowsby who practised small beast surgery, but certainly not out here._
> 
> _Do you know what we found in her? A die, a simple die, lost from a child’s game set or the like, covered in all sorts from its odd experience. Such a small thing, but almost fatal. The vet later smiled, a tense sort of smile like he wasn’t quite used to the expression, and made some sort of comment about chance, holding the die between two thick, callused fingers._
> 
> _Mr. Broadwithe looked down upon the cat and nodded, as close to a thanks as he ever got, and the vet was paid and left. A service offered. It seemed so peculiar that he had spent hours in our home, our shop, saving the life of Mary’s closest friend and yet, we allowed him to leave without a word._
> 
> _I followed him out, watched him walk up the street into the fog that billowed along the roadways with the coming dawn, and vanish into the gloom. Long after I couldn’t see him anymore, I could still hear the clink of the bottles in his bag and the heavy tread of his boots._
> 
> _Littlin lived. The vet was gone the next day, off to join the RAF, a vet at war. I wonder sometimes if he’ll return in the same fashion. The last of his kind. The ones we have to replace him are men of science, of logic and reason, and not quite the men to try an impromptu animal surgery on the dusty floor of a cobbler’s shop._
> 
> _The Great War seems never-ending and they make shoes by factory line and put vets in the sky nowadays, and I guess I really can see what you mean by change. Even here, even in sleepy Saltaire. I hardly know what place there is for men like the vet and Mr Broadwithe in this new world, or where I shall find myself in the years to come._
> 
> _Please, do consider coming to us, my wages are certainly enough to cover your travel and I would feel at ease to know that you are out of London and far from falling bombs._
> 
> _I must go, the Church is having a war-effort meeting and they want me to help with the sewing in my spare time, what little of it I have._
> 
> _I hope this letter finds you well, and in good time. With much love, your daughter, Sybil._


End file.
